CHAELISA One-shots

Im Inlove With My Besfwen

**

Chaeyoung's singing.

She's singing, and all Lisa could think was wow, you know? And not because of the amazing outfit the other girl had shown up wearing in lieu of the uniform, or even because of her voice (although it was every bit as impressive then as it has always been). Instead, it's because Lisa has suddenly realized how privileged she is to know someone like Chaeyoung .

Chaeyoung was so passionate and brave, and despite everything she'd been through she was still so, so strong. Strong enough to know who she was and own it, not willing to compromise that to fit in, or to avoid getting mocked and pushed around. She was so smart, and funny - her witty remarks, always sardonic and sometimes flat out inappropriate, never failed to make Lisa laugh. And when she cared about something, she cared so deeply. Who else would be capable of standing up in front of a room full of teenage boys and girls, unabashedly crying over the loss of a pet they'd only had for a few short months? Who else would feel it that much?

Even when performing the other girl was something to be admired. Unlike Lisa, Chaeyoung didn't feel the need to dance around the room, leaping onto furniture and pulling silly faces to ensure she had the crowd's attention. She just poured her entire heart, everything she was feeling, into the melody and let her (beautiful, and breathtaking, and completely unique) voice speak for itself. It was moving in it's simplicity in a way that Lisa had never been able to pull off.

And as she watched Chaeyoung make her way across the room, Lisa realized that all of this was unlike anything her other friends had ever been capable of making her feel. Even though she'd known the Kim's almost two years longer, and even though she counted Jisoo and Jennie as being being among her closest friends, they'd never understood her the way Chaeyoung did, and she'd never understood them the way she did Chaeyoung . They'd never inspired in her the same admiration or desire to protect, and although Lisa knew and was willing to admit that she craved approval like it was the air she breathed, she'd never cared nearly as much about their opinion of her as she did about Chaeyoung's.

And then it hit Lisa, like a bolt of lightening - Oh my God. Oh my God, I love her. Not the platonic love that she'd convinced herself for months was all she felt for the other girl, but love love. The real thing. The kind people sang about, and wrote about, and dreamed about. The kind she'd been waiting her whole life to feel for another person.

For several minutes Lisa was too stunned to do much more than breathe, and even that was difficult to remember. She was dimly aware that the song had concluded and the meeting was moving on. Various people were approaching Chaeyoung and offering their condolences, and Lisa, on autopilot, joined the throng gathered around her. The Kim's, most of whom had been teasing her for months about having a crush on Chaeyoung, parted and let her through. Before she really knew what she was doing Lisa had her arms around the slim, pale figure and was crushing Chaeyoung to her in the tightest hug imaginable.

As she pulled back she could feel rather than see the question in Chaeyoung's eyes - because of course, Chaeyoung just... She got her. But as much as Lisa wanted to just lean in and kiss Chaeyoung right then and there, kiss her until everything else disappeared and their lips bruised and they couldn't breathe, she knew it wasn't the time. Jisoo would probably have a heart attack over that kind of public display of affection in the middle of a meeting, although that wasn't really what was stopping her. Jisoo had a tendency to freak out over everything, after all.

No, the thing that was giving her pause was that her entire world had just been turned upside down. Or rather, she'd just just found out that it had been, because the thing she was discovering wasn't that she'd just now fallen in love with Chaeyoung. It was that she'd been in love with the other girl all along, and somehow failed to figure it out until fate had finally smacked her over the head with it.

So she heaved an awkward shrug and flushed, avoiding Chaeyoung's curious gaze, and when Jisoo finally banged her gavel to declare the meeting had come to an end Lisa was the first one out the door. Her heart was pounding so fast, you see, and it felt so full that she was afraid it might burst at any moment. All she knew was that she had to get out of there before it did.

She let her feet carry her down the corridor without having any real destination in mind, and eventually found herself in the hallway she'd run through hand in hand with Chaeyoung back on the very first day they'd met. Oh God, how had she not realized it before? How had she not realized it immediately? It wasn't like she did that with everyone, just grabbed them by the hand and dragged them to the senior commons so she could sing a flirty Katy Perry song directly to them. Had it really been just about showing off for the spy? Or had it been about showing off for Chaeyoung, even then?

She didn't know. That was the thing, she just didn't know. By the time she'd realized it fifteen minutes before, she was already in so far over her head that it was impossible to pin point where it had all began, even in retrospect.

Lisa didn't know whether she wanted to laugh, or cry, or run screaming for the hills. She'd never been in love before. She'd thought she had, of course. A naturally romantic frame of mind had taken more than one bout of infatuation and built it up into something more. One only had to look at the situation with Miyeon (and, honestly, looking back she had no idea how she'd even noticed Miyeon, when Chaeyoung had been there beside her) to see how easily Lisa could fool herself into thinking someone was The One. But this... this was different, this was real, and that scared the hell out of her.

Because she knew she was going to mess it up. Despite how desperately she craved romance, that was just what she did - she fucked up. Maybe, even, already had. After all, she hadn't just unintentionally lead Chaeyoung on for months only to enlist Chaeyoung's help in an attempt to ask out another girl and brushed off Chaeyoung's own confession of feelings with a 'let's just be friends' speech. Nope, Lisa had to go and also (briefly) date Chaeyoung's frienemy almost immediately afterward and tell Chaeyoung that her sexy faces made her look like she had gas.

Oh God, she groaned, leaning against the wall and slumping to the floor with her head in her hands, this is a fucking disaster. Of course. Of course she'd have to go and realize it when it was too late. Valentine's Day had been over a month ago, and with everything that had happened in between the chances of Chaeyoung not having gotten over her crush on Lisa were slim to none. The Kim's wracked her brains, thinking back over the past few weeks and trying to remember if Chaeyoung had displayed any signs of still being smitten with her. The other girl had been as friendly and charming and (oh, if she'd only realized this before) adorable as ever, but to her dismay Lisa couldn't pin point any one look or touch that said 'I am in love with you' instead of 'I'm really comfortable with you because you're my best friend'.

And that was... it was bad. Because regardless of whether or not Chaeyoung returned her feelings, she knew this was a chance she had to take. She owed it to Chaeyoung, and she owed it to herself. This wasn't the type of thing that came along every day, you know? It wasn't just one of those high school crushes that felt important while it was happening but in retrospect didn't really matter. Lisa had gone through a plethora of those, she recognized the signs, and this was nothing like that. It carried the same turbulant highs and lows (she'd figured it out less than half an hour ago and she already felt like she was on a roller coaster), but underneath it all was something warm and steady and secure.

So she had to tell her. As suddenly and certainly as she'd realized she was in love with the other girl, Lisa realized that if she kept silent about it and continued on as she had been without giving this a shot it would end up being one of those things she'd always regret.

**

(And three days later, when she was leaning into Chaeyoung with the other girl's tongue in her mouth and feeling like she was on fire with how much she cared about this girl and how much she wanted her, Lisa was glad she took that chance. She wasn't going to make the same mistake she always made and say that Chaeyoung was The One, the girl she was going to end up spending the rest of her life with. What she did know was there was no one else she'd rather be with right now. And that, she discovered, was all that really mattered.

**

Ctto :')